2018 In the News Archive | Emory University School of Law

Melissa Carter, executive director of Emory Law's Barton Child Law and Policy Center, was quoted in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story that alleges a volunteer coach with the Pope High School wrestling program sexually abused young boys for years, despite one mother's efforts to have him arrested. In 2017, the coach pleaded guilty to sexually abusing two boys in Pennsylvania. Carter said there appeared to be multiple occasions when adults in positions of responsibility for children failed them. "The law itself is just a minimum, and often the law doesn't answer for us what the ethical or moral thing to do is," Carter said. "We all, as adults, should be aware of the signs and symptoms of abuse."

Drew Findling 84L has gained some renown as a courtroom killer for an array of high-profile acts. But he has also taken on the role of a mentor, and even a father figure, to some clients as they try to outrun societal disadvantages (and youthful recklessness) in favor of fame. "It is increasingly disturbing to me, the 'X' that is on the forehead of people in this industry," Findling tells The New York Times. "There's such a target on these young guys," he said. "Every once in a while someone is going to make a mistake. But no one looks at all the good that comes out of what they do."

It's important for citizens to participate in the lawmaking process by lobbying for changes they want to see, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Tuesday at Emory Law, during an appearance that included a conversation with her former law clerk, Professor Fred Smith Jr. "I believe with all my heart that unless we become engaged in our country and become active participants in making a difference in the world we're in, that we will be nothing but bystanders otherwise, and nobody should live their life being a bystander," she said.

The late Justice William Brennan is said to have described the secret to success on the U.S. Supreme Court with five fingers outstretched. With five votes on a nine-member court, a justice could do anything, Jonathan Ringel writes for the Daily Report. Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested a similar approach when she told a packed Emory University audience Tuesday how she handles harsh criticism of her opinions. Of colleagues who have occasionally blasted one of her positions, she said, "I could have strangled them, but I need their vote for the next case."

Proposed changes to Georgia's adoption laws are overdue, says Barton Child Law and Policy Center Executive Director Melissa Carter. Changes include shortening the time a birth mother can change her mind after signing adoption documents from 10 to four days, and allowing adoptive parents to reimburse the birth mother for basic living expenses during the pregnancy. Present laws haven't been updated since 1990. "Prospective adoptive parents will look to adopt children in other states where the laws are more friendly," Carter said. "This bill is a necessary and overdue modernization of our adoption laws."

The diesel exhaust experiments Volkswagen performed with monkeys were cruel, but hardly unusual in the corporate world, Emory Law Professor Ani Satz writes for The Hill. "Corporate behavior that seeks to maximize profits outside ethical decision-making often involves fraud, environmental harm, and harm to humans and animals because it entails complete disregard for obligations to stakeholders other than shareholders," she writes.

A City of South Fulton councilwoman has proposed a controversial law that could send parents to jail and fine them for their children 's crimes. Paul Howard, the Fulton County district attorney, said in a statement that he thought the proposal could be unconstitutional. "It's hurting the wrong person," said Randee Waldman, director of Emory Law's Barton Juvenile Defender Clinic. "They're not standing next to their kids while they're committing crimes."

Artificial intelligence is is already being adopted for military use, raising questions as to what role the technology will play in the end-of-days, says a Breaking Israel News story. Although AI poses many ethical and theological questions, Emory Law Senior Lecturer Mark Goldfeder says the development of technology was in fact intended by God to be part of man¿s role in being a partner with God in Creation.

The year 1968 was tumultuous--the continuing war in Vietnam, political protests and the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. But it also marked a judicial sea change. Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary Dudziak is quoted in Political News on the end of the Warren U.S. Supreme Court, which handed down landmark decisions including Brown v. Board of Education. "It's just a tremendously important moment in Supreme Court history," Dudziak said of 1968. "It's the beginning of that turn away from this era of expansive liberalism."

This week's decision by a panel of three federal judges in a North Carolina gerrymandering case sends a warning against all such partisan efforts, including in Georgia, Emory Law Professor Michael Kang tells WABE. The judges found that Republicans had illegally drawn North Carolina's congressional district map to give GOP candidates "a solid advantage for most of the seats," NPR reports. "For the most part, whoever controlled state government thought they could gerrymander on a partisan basis," Kang said. "So I think that sort of license to do whatever you want in gerrymandering is put on hold."

An opinion article concerning lateral moves by judges, by Emory Law Professor Jonathan Nash, was published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal. The subscriber-only op-ed was based on Nash's 2017 article in the Vanderbilt Law Journal, which you may read by following the link.